Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Anyone got some recommended guides to male fashion? I don't think I dress terribly but it seems like something that it would pay to know more about.
I am a gay man with a degree in fashion design who has spent most of my life obsessed with clothing. In the end the only two things that matter for a man are neatness and confidence. If you look sloppy, it doesn't matter how much confidence you have, people will write you off. If you appear to have no confidence, it doesn't matter how neat you look, people can tell you don't like yourself, and others won't like you either. You don't need a guide, in fact the more concerned with fashion you are the worse you are at it, which is the terrible truth I've arrived at. Pick out flattering styles that function and make you look put together that will earn you respect from the people you want to impress, but don't overdo it. It's a tricky balance, but err on the side of thinking too little rather than thinking too much. I apologize if these maxims are too vague, but if you're looking for specifics you've already lost the plot. (Don't get hung up on 2 button vs. 3 button jackets or the width of your tie or anything else. Invest in a functioning wardrobe and then wear it with the confidence that you know you've made good decisions.)
More options
Context Copy link
Derek Guy’s ‘Die, Workwear!’ is (IMO) the best menswear blog out there. But it’s not really a guide. His current ‘How to Develop Good Taste’ series, now on Part 4, is a good read.
Guy’s instagram account of same name has some funny inside-baseball memes as well. Like how Daily Wire pundits are now wearing the kind of #menswear-era cuts and styles made popular 15 years ago by Thom Browne and Tom Ford: https://instagram.com/p/CixgYj-LV-c/
As for a guide, it depends on what you want, because the internet has fragmented men’s fashion. There’s a bit of nostalgia for the #menswear era of the late Aughts, because it might be the last time trends for men all moved in the same direction.
Digging into Flusser’s and Boyer’s books and learning to pick cuts that flatter your (you, your specific body) are a great base. Guy touches on these in his aforementioned series.
Thanks for the recommendation on Die Workwear's current series, I hadn't been reading that blog for a while. On the other hand, I had to laugh when your man Derek had this to say in part 3, just before talking about your boy Boyer:
More options
Context Copy link
And if you have the stamina for it, there’s always the ‘Throwing Fits’ podcast and Instagram, if you want to try and chase fragmented trends based on the advice of two funny menswear bros.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
https://old.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/5da1dc/the_basic_bastard_basic_wardrobe_and_inspiration/
Start here, work your way out from there. Assuming you are the modal Mottizen (24-35, College educated or thereabouts, white, neither immensely fat nor really built, somewhat but not tragically nerdy; essentially the Basic Bastard incarnate) these are the core elements of how you should be dressing. Plain t shirts, OCBDs, well fitted chinos or jeans, leather shoes. Maybe find a nice dive watch. It communicates the right things and highlights the right attributes while fitting in the vast majority of social situations the modal Mottizen finds himself in. You can adapt these items to work, any nights out that fit between dive and cocktail bar, concerts for any genre that isn't Drill or Outlaw Country, church, or house parties without looking terribly out of place anywhere. Roll the sleeves up or down, pull on a nice blue blazer and a tie, or put on a good heavy cotton hoodie, you fit in everywhere. You'll be a little dressed up and look good, but you won't be a total spaz LARPer in a three piece suit at a ballgame or something.
Additional principles that a lot of online guides and their followers miss:
-- Eliminating the ugly things in your wardrobe is just as important as buying better things. The "Capsule wardrobe" idea is basically that if you have a handful of items that all go together and look good, and you don't have anything else, you can trade more frequent laundry for looking good all the time. For whatever reason, if you keep ugly things you will wear them at inconvenient times, it's like a rule of nature. Buy less, buy better, wear it more.
-- Fitness is the most important thing to your appearance. For men I think aesthetically it is just important to have the silhouette of someone who is neither massively fat nor tragically skinny, from there the clothes should hang just fine, but building better shoulders and a nicer ass is going to do more for you than any blazer or pair of jeans can do.
-- Pick clothing you are comfortable in. "A man should pick out his clothes carefully in the morning, then never think about them again." If you're constantly fiddling with your clothes and look like they are wearing you, you come across like a schoolboy resenting getting dressed for church, rather than a guy who just looks this good all the time.
-- Fit is king. Getting the right fit will improve comfort and look more than anything else, the right fit emphasizes your positive attributes and covers up your negative attributes. You can't just read a review saying "X makes chinos that fit good" because X might make chinos that fit that guy good but they might not fit you at all. If you work out, this effect is magnified, I'm not particularly all that good a lifter but my ass does not fit in the vast majority of brands that are selling stuff in my waist size.* The solution is to find the brand that cut stuff to fit you, that used a fit model that looked like you. Dedicate some time to trying on a lot of brands, until you find the one that works. Don't be afraid to tailor stuff.
-- Once you have your basics, thrifting is the efficient way to get great stuff cheap. Either Goodwill, or Poshmark/Ebay et al. Clothing loses the vast majority of its value the moment the tags come off.
*To get technical, the industry standard men's suit is drop 5-6", meaning a 40 chest to a 34-5 waist. Even a casual lifter could easily reach a drop 8 (40 chest, 32 waist) or even a drop 10. In the long run, if you lift or otherwise have an oddly shaped body, stretch fabrics are your friend, and get a tailor or get used to some mix of belting 5 extra inches on your waist or having your thighs packed like sausage casings. And for suits, separates are the way to go.
☝️ I’d be a little careful with a five year old guide from rMFA. Cuts and silhouettes are moving on from the #menswear era that spawned that subreddit. And watch out for the lack of a collar roll on the types of OCBDs they liked when that guide was written. Matt Walsh, as an example, dresses like a bad imitation of a gay guy from 2008. This stuff does filter downstream from the high-low world of tastemaking, even to guys who say this stuff isn’t what straight men concern themselves with.
rMFA isn’t terrible, but it’s mostly guys who reworked their closet 12 months ago giving advice to new people about to replace them on that forum.
Which part of it do you think doesn't work? The plain white/black t shirts, the ocbd, or the dark jeans?
In the past ten years, the athleisute thing has given us quality joggers, everyone wears minimalist sneakers rather than jeans and loafers, Patagonia or Arc'teryx jackets. The fit is personal, whatever you personally think you look good and feel comfortable in.
Beyond that you're getting into trends and Hypebeast fuckboy shit. Nobody on themotte should be worrying about streetwear fits, we're not collectively that cool. Classics are forever, with a flourish or a fit change every few years.
“Classics are forever with a flourish or fit change” is incompatible with “fit is king” unless you really learn what you like and flatters you, and are happy being out of sync with what is currently on trend in the mind of normies. If the average Mottizen thrifts a ‘50s Brooks navy blazer he’s going to feel weird about how square and structured the shoulders are if he’s looking to fit in, even though a navy blazer is “classic”, and even if he can’t articulate it.
You mention dark-wash jeans? That’s downstream of a niche Japanese interest in ‘50s and ‘60s Americana that the fashion world brought back over to the U.S. from abroad. I know no Mottizens were buying Momotaro selvedge in the Aughts, but Todd Snyder when he was still at J. Crew was, and then the GAP, etc. picked up on it. And now a five year old MFA guide recommends it, but the tastemakers that will determine what MFA is going to recommend in a couple years from now ditched dark wash a couple years back, and that too will filter down. It’s all going to churn, and churn, and churn, even for normies. A five year old MFA guide is already long in the tooth, and was itself born of trends — it didn’t opt out of them. And they ultimately won’t stick with them, either.
Also, dark wash jeans, in terms of “classic” rules, don’t offer enough of a contrast with a navy blazer, running a foul of not clearly differentiating pants from an odd jacket, even though that was (is?) an MFA favorite. MFA didn’t come up with some classic or objective reason dark wash jeans were preferable.
My point is, if you have the time, please dig through something like Guy’s series on developing personal taste because that has a much longer shelf life than an MFA guide and you’ll honestly be happier with the results.
Dude I was reading Die, Workwear when I was in undergrad 12 years ago; I've had Boyer and Flusser on my shelf for about as long. I'm not recommending this from a lack of knowledge, but from a surfeit of it. Ivy Style is more my bible, because that's the best that semi-athletic employed and educated white guys have ever looked, but I think Die Workwear does good work. Nonetheless:
Recommending "Find your own personal style" to someone asking a question about fashion on themotte is like telling someone asking for dating advice to "be themselves;" or telling a newbie weightlifter to lift to an RPE of 7 in every workout, they have no idea what that means, or even worse they think they know what that means and get it completely wrong. Cliche: you have to learn the rules before you break them. You need a baseline of understanding of what stuff is before you can start to think creatively. Your advice, while theoretically spotlessly solid, isn't actionable for a guy just starting out. Literally name an actual item you think the modal mottizen ought to be wearing to look good.
The contrast is in the texture, rough denim vs. smooth worsted wool.
Hence why my advice under "fit is king" wasn't "Slim fitting is best" or "loose fits are on trend;" the advice was "Go try on a whole bunch of brands until you find the thing for you." Put on a bunch of shirts and look in the mirror. Which one feels right to you? I guess that contradicts my theory that you want to tell the newbie everything, but fit is one thing that is impossible to pin down from afar, trying on a bunch of stuff is the best way to learn what you like.
Being on trend is pretty rarely an actually attractive quality in a heterosexual man. Learned that the hard way a couple time. But I didn't recommend thrifting a 50s blazer, I recommended going on 2nd hand apps and picking up stuff from a year ago at a fraction of the price. If your trend time horizon is <1year, it really shouldn't be.
PS: I'll just link it for you because I know you were itching to when you gave me the history of darkwash jeans
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I put absolutely no more thought into fashion than I have to. Because I'm heterosexual, hah.
These two heuristics should serve you well.
Well fitting. This does the lions share of whether clothing looks good on your or not. There are many guides online on how to asses this.
Be Generic. Min-Max the number of people you turn on/off with your choice of fashion. Some group might really like some specific kind of fashion but that comes at a cost of other groups disliking that.
Don't overthink it. Fashion is what women and gays compete with each other with, if you are a man into women, you don't need to go galaxy brained on this. As for websites and guides, I remember AskMen.com used to have relatively decent no bullshit guides. The last time I browsed that website was before 2016 so they might have gone woke in the meanwhile, but that shouldn't matter too much.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link